Archive for the ‘documentary’ tag

It seems I have a certain soft spot for videos that fall into the category of “Intimate-Documentary-Portraying-a-Skilled-Crafts-Person-Deeply-Engaged With-the-Craft-They-Love” – a genre that I have just coined that should slot in nicely between “Indie Rom-Com” and “Japanese Horror.” Maybe it’s the romantic appeal of getting away from the sterile realm of the digital and getting ones hands dirty.
A prime example is The Carpenter,1 a short film by Deep Green Sea, an Athens-based group of multi-disciplinary artists working in film and animation. The film is part of a series entitled The Art of Making, which also features films on dressmaking and guitar-making.

Made By Hand is a short film series by Brooklyn’s Bureau of Common Goods that explores and celebrates the handmade. The second episode tells the story of Joel Bukiewicz of Cut Brooklyn, who turned his back on writing to become a knife maker. Deeply thoughtful – and at times painfully honest – Joel talks about what it means to make something by hand in an age of mass production.

“So you go into the shop and you cut yourself, burn yourself, fuck stuff up, you ruin something you worked on for three weeks and you never make that mistake again. So this is how I learned… It takes buckets of blood and sweat. “

– Joel Bukiewicz

His notion of creativity is not some rarified indulgence, but instead a dedication; the act of investing time and energy into physically making something. This idea of patience, care and sheer grit, focused for hours onto a single object, is what separates it from something bolted together by a robot on a factory assembly line.

If you enjoy this film, be sure to check out the first film from the series, in which they visit Breuckelen Distilling; Brooklyn’s first post-Prohibition gin distillery.